A few days later, I bought a Dell D610 laptop (Celeron 2.0GHz, 40GB hard disc) off Ebay and some additional memory to take it to 2GB.

I had downloaded Ubuntu Server 10.10 about the same time and burnt the ISO to CD, however when I came to use it I found the image was incomplete, so had to download it again. Second time lucky.

The notes below are for me as an aid for future rebuilds, but may help someone else with their configuration.

I installed the operating system using pretty much the default settings and after it had finished installing and restarted, I changed the network settings to use a static IP address instead of DHCP.

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

I changed the primary interface from:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

to

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.x.x.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.x.x.0
broadcast 10.x.x.255
gateway 10.x.x.x

Or at least my specific details instead of those above.

I was going to edit the the DNS settings

sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

but they had already correctly got my DNS settings, so I didn’t need to change the nameserver entry.

I then restarted the networking

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

OK, now the fun begins!

The old laptop provides the following:

• Webserver – Apache, PHP
• Filter proxy server – Squid, Dansguardian
• Email spam filtering – SpamAssassin

It was all managed using Webmin, and I also had VNC configured to give me a session onto the display, yes I know its a server, but I installed a GUI to make my life easier.

First I installed webmin to make my life easier:

sudo aptitude install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl apt-show-versions

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.530_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.530_all.deb

Once Webmin was installed it simplified the installation of other requirements. NTP to ensure that the time was synchronised with the rest of my network.

install ntp
cd /etc
sudo vi ntp.conf
remove server ntp.unbuntu.com replace with sarig.midkemia.local (my domain controller and time source).

Next to join it to my domain; install following packages:
keyutils
krb5-config
libgssrpc4
libkadm5clnt-mit7
krb5-user
smbclient
smbfs
winbind

sudo vi krb5.conf

[libdefaults]
default_realm = MIDKEMIA.LOCAL
dns_lookup_realm = false
dns_lookup_kdc = false
ticket_lifetime = 24h
# The following krb5.conf variables are only for MIT Kerberos.
krb4_config = /etc/krb.conf
krb4_realms = /etc/krb.realms
kdc_timesync = 1
ccache_type = 4
forwardable = true
proxiable = true

[logging]
default = FILE:/var/log/krb5libs.log
kdc = FILE:/var/log/krb5kdc.log
admin_server = FILE:/var/log/kadmind.log

# The following encryption type specification will be used by MIT Kerberos
# if uncommented.  In general, the defaults in the MIT Kerberos code are
# correct and overriding these specifications only serves to disable new
# encryption types as they are added, creating interoperability problems.

#    default_tgs_enctypes = aes256-cts arcfour-hmac-md5 des3-hmac-sha1 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5
#    default_tkt_enctypes = aes256-cts arcfour-hmac-md5 des3-hmac-sha1 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5
#    permitted_enctypes = aes256-cts arcfour-hmac-md5 des3-hmac-sha1 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5

# The following libdefaults parameters are only for Heimdal Kerberos.
v4_instance_resolve = false
v4_name_convert = {
host = {
rcmd = host
ftp = ftp
}
plain = {
something = something-else
}
}
fcc-mit-ticketflags = true

[realms]
MIDKEMIA.LOCAL = {
kdc = sarig
admin_server = sarig.midkemia.local
default_domain = midkemia.local
}
ATHENA.MIT.EDU = {
kdc = kerberos.mit.edu:88
kdc = kerberos-1.mit.edu:88
kdc = kerberos-2.mit.edu:88
admin_server = kerberos.mit.edu
default_domain = mit.edu
}
MEDIA-LAB.MIT.EDU = {
kdc = kerberos.media.mit.edu
admin_server = kerberos.media.mit.edu
}
ZONE.MIT.EDU = {
kdc = casio.mit.edu
kdc = seiko.mit.edu
admin_server = casio.mit.edu
}
MOOF.MIT.EDU = {
kdc = three-headed-dogcow.mit.edu:88
kdc = three-headed-dogcow-1.mit.edu:88
admin_server = three-headed-dogcow.mit.edu
}
CSAIL.MIT.EDU = {
kdc = kerberos-1.csail.mit.edu
kdc = kerberos-2.csail.mit.edu
admin_server = kerberos.csail.mit.edu
default_domain = csail.mit.edu
krb524_server = krb524.csail.mit.edu
}
IHTFP.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.ihtfp.org
admin_server = kerberos.ihtfp.org
}
GNU.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.gnu.org
kdc = kerberos-2.gnu.org
kdc = kerberos-3.gnu.org
admin_server = kerberos.gnu.org
}
1TS.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.1ts.org
admin_server = kerberos.1ts.org
}
GRATUITOUS.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.gratuitous.org
admin_server = kerberos.gratuitous.org
}
DOOMCOM.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.doomcom.org
admin_server = kerberos.doomcom.org
}
ANDREW.CMU.EDU = {
kdc = vice28.fs.andrew.cmu.edu
kdc = vice2.fs.andrew.cmu.edu
kdc = vice11.fs.andrew.cmu.edu
kdc = vice12.fs.andrew.cmu.edu
admin_server = vice28.fs.andrew.cmu.edu
default_domain = andrew.cmu.edu
}
CS.CMU.EDU = {
kdc = kerberos.cs.cmu.edu
kdc = kerberos-2.srv.cs.cmu.edu
admin_server = kerberos.cs.cmu.edu
}
DEMENTIA.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.dementia.org
kdc = kerberos2.dementia.org
admin_server = kerberos.dementia.org
}
stanford.edu = {
kdc = krb5auth1.stanford.edu
kdc = krb5auth2.stanford.edu
kdc = krb5auth3.stanford.edu
admin_server = krb5-admin.stanford.edu
default_domain = stanford.edu
}

[domain_realm]
.mit.edu = ATHENA.MIT.EDU
mit.edu = ATHENA.MIT.EDU
.media.mit.edu = MEDIA-LAB.MIT.EDU
media.mit.edu = MEDIA-LAB.MIT.EDU
.csail.mit.edu = CSAIL.MIT.EDU
csail.mit.edu = CSAIL.MIT.EDU
.whoi.edu = ATHENA.MIT.EDU
whoi.edu = ATHENA.MIT.EDU
.stanford.edu = stanford.edu
.midkemia.local = MIDKEMIA.LOCAL
midkemia.local = MIDKEMIA.LOCAL

[login]
krb4_convert = true
krb4_get_tickets = false

[appdefaults]
pam = {
debug = false
ticket_lifetime = 36000
renew_lifetime = 36000
forwardable = true
krb4_convert = false
}

kinit administrator@MIDKEMIA.LOCAL

should prompt for password and not throw error

vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

#
# Sample configuration file for the Samba suite for Debian GNU/Linux.
#
#
# This is the main Samba configuration file. You should read the
# smb.conf(5) manual page in order to understand the options listed
# here. Samba has a huge number of configurable options most of which
# are not shown in this example
#
# Any line which starts with a ; (semi-colon) or a # (hash)
# is a comment and is ignored. In this example we will use a #
# for commentary and a ; for parts of the config file that you
# may wish to enable
#
# NOTE: Whenever you modify this file you should run the command
# “testparm” to check that you have not made any basic syntactic
# errors.
#

#======================= Global Settings =======================

[global]
log level = 3
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
winbind enum users = Yes
winbind enum groups = Yes
winbind use default domain = Yes
winbind nested groups = Yes
winbind separator = +
idmap uid = 600-20000
idmap gid = 600-20000
socket options = TCP_NODELAY
obey pam restrictions = yes
client ntlmv2 auth = yes
wins server = 10.x.x.3
client use spnego = yes
map to guest = bad user
winbind trusted domains only = yes
encrypt passwords = true
realm = MIDKEMIA.LOCAL
passdb backend = tdbsam
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
template shell = /bin/bash
dns proxy = no
preferred master = no
server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu)
invalid users = root
unix password sync = yes
template homedir = /home/%D/%U
workgroup = MIDKEMIA0
syslog = 0
security = ADS
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
usershare allow guests = yes
max log size = 1000
pam password change = yes
smb ports = 139

## Browsing/Identification ###

# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of

# server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field

# Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section:
# WINS Support – Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable its WINS Server
;   wins support = no

# WINS Server – Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client
# Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both

# This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS.

# What naming service and in what order should we use to resolve host names
# to IP addresses
;   name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast

#### Networking ####

# The specific set of interfaces / networks to bind to
# This can be either the interface name or an IP address/netmask;
# interface names are normally preferred
;   interfaces = 127.0.0.0/8 eth0

# Only bind to the named interfaces and/or networks; you must use the
# ‘interfaces’ option above to use this.
# It is recommended that you enable this feature if your Samba machine is
# not protected by a firewall or is a firewall itself.  However, this
# option cannot handle dynamic or non-broadcast interfaces correctly.
;   bind interfaces only = true

#### Debugging/Accounting ####

# This tells Samba to use a separate log file for each machine
# that connects

# Cap the size of the individual log files (in KiB).

# If you want Samba to only log through syslog then set the following
# parameter to ‘yes’.
;   syslog only = no

# We want Samba to log a minimum amount of information to syslog. Everything
# should go to /var/log/samba/log.{smbd,nmbd} instead. If you want to log
# through syslog you should set the following parameter to something higher.

# Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace

####### Authentication #######

# “security = user” is always a good idea. This will require a Unix account
# in this server for every user accessing the server. See
# /usr/share/doc/samba-doc/htmldocs/Samba3-HOWTO/ServerType.html
# in the samba-doc package for details.

# You may wish to use password encryption.  See the section on
# ‘encrypt passwords’ in the smb.conf(5) manpage before enabling.

# If you are using encrypted passwords, Samba will need to know what
# password database type you are using.

;   guest account = nobody

# This boolean parameter controls whether Samba attempts to sync the Unix
# password with the SMB password when the encrypted SMB password in the
# passdb is changed.

# For Unix password sync to work on a Debian GNU/Linux system, the following
# parameters must be set (thanks to Ian Kahan <<kahan@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> for
# sending the correct chat script for the passwd program in Debian Sarge).

# This boolean controls whether PAM will be used for password changes
# when requested by an SMB client instead of the program listed in
# ‘passwd program’. The default is ‘no’.

# This option controls how nsuccessful authentication attempts are mapped
# to anonymous connections

########## Domains ###########

# Is this machine able to authenticate users. Both PDC and BDC
# must have this setting enabled. If you are the BDC you must
# change the ‘domain master’ setting to no
#
;   domain logons = yes
#
# The following setting only takes effect if ‘domain logons’ is set
# It specifies the location of the user’s profile directory
# from the client point of view)
# The following required a [profiles] share to be setup on the
# samba server (see below)
;   logon path = \\%N\profiles\%U
# Another common choice is storing the profile in the user’s home directory
;   logon path = \\%N\%U\profile

# The following setting only takes effect if ‘domain logons’ is set
# It specifies the location of a user’s home directory (from the client
# point of view)
;   logon drive = H:
;   logon home = \\%N\%U

# The following setting only takes effect if ‘domain logons’ is set
# It specifies the script to run during logon. The script must be stored
# in the [netlogon] share
# NOTE: Must be store in ‘DOS’ file format convention
;   logon script = logon.cmd

# This allows Unix users to be created on the domain controller via the SAMR
# RPC pipe.  The example command creates a user account with a disabled Unix
# password; please adapt to your needs
; add user script = /usr/sbin/adduser –quiet –disabled-password –gecos “” %u

########## Printing ##########

# If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
# than setting them up individually then you’ll need this
;   load printers = yes

# lpr(ng) printing. You may wish to override the location of the
# printcap file
;   printing = bsd
;   printcap name = /etc/printcap

# CUPS printing.  See also the cupsaddsmb(8) manpage in the
# cupsys-client package.
;   printing = cups
;   printcap name = cups

############ Misc ############

# Using the following line enables you to customise your configuration
# on a per machine basis. The %m gets replaced with the netbios name
# of the machine that is connecting
;   include = /home/samba/etc/smb.conf.%m

# Most people will find that this option gives better performance.
# See smb.conf(5) and /usr/share/doc/samba-doc/htmldocs/Samba3-HOWTO/speed.html
# for details
# You may want to add the following on a Linux system:
#         SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

# The following parameter is useful only if you have the linpopup package
# installed. The samba maintainer and the linpopup maintainer are
# working to ease installation and configuration of linpopup and samba.
;   message command = /bin/sh -c ‘/usr/bin/linpopup “%f” “%m” %s; rm %s’ &

# Domain Master specifies Samba to be the Domain Master Browser. If this
# machine will be configured as a BDC (a secondary logon server), you
# must set this to ‘no’; otherwise, the default behavior is recommended.
;   domain master = auto

# Some defaults for winbind (make sure you’re not using the ranges
# for something else.)

# The following was the default behaviour in sarge,
# but samba upstream reverted the default because it might induce
# performance issues in large organizations.
# See Debian bug #368251 for some of the consequences of *not*
# having this setting and smb.conf(5) for details.
#  winbind seperator = +

#Setup usershare options to enable non-root users to share folders
# with the net usershare command.

# Maximum number of usershare. 0 (default) means that usershare is disabled.
;   usershare max shares = 100

# Allow users who’ve been granted usershare privileges to create
# public shares, not just authenticated ones

#======================= Share Definitions =======================

# Un-comment the following (and tweak the other settings below to suit)
# to enable the default home directory shares.  This will share each
# user’s home directory as \\server\username
;[homes]
;   comment = Home Directories
;   browseable = no

# By default, the home directories are exported read-only. Change the
# next parameter to ‘no’ if you want to be able to write to them.
;   read only = yes

# File creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to
# create files with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775.
;   create mask = 0700

# Directory creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to
# create dirs. with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775.
;   directory mask = 0700

# By default, \\server\username shares can be connected to by anyone
# with access to the samba server.  Un-comment the following parameter
# to make sure that only “username” can connect to \\server\username
# This might need tweaking when using external authentication schemes
;   valid users = %S

# Un-comment the following and create the netlogon directory for Domain Logons
# (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.)
;[netlogon]
;   comment = Network Logon Service
;   path = /home/samba/netlogon
;   guest ok = yes
;   read only = yes
;   share modes = no

# Un-comment the following and create the profiles directory to store
# users profiles (see the “logon path” option above)
# (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.)
# The path below should be writable by all users so that their
# profile directory may be created the first time they log on
;[profiles]
;   comment = Users profiles
;   path = /home/samba/profiles
;   guest ok = no
;   browseable = no
;   create mask = 0600
;   directory mask = 0700

[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
create mask = 0700

# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no
# Uncomment to allow remote administration of Windows print drivers.
# Replace ‘ntadmin’ with the name of the group your admin users are
# members of.
;   write list = root, @ntadmin

# A sample share for sharing your CD-ROM with others.
;[cdrom]
;   comment = Samba server’s CD-ROM
;   read only = yes
;   locking = no
;   path = /cdrom
;   guest ok = yes

# The next two parameters show how to auto-mount a CD-ROM when the
#    cdrom share is accesed. For this to work /etc/fstab must contain
#    an entry like this:
#
#       /dev/scd0   /cdrom  iso9660 defaults,noauto,ro,user   0 0
#
# The CD-ROM gets unmounted automatically after the connection to the
#
# If you don’t want to use auto-mounting/unmounting make sure the CD
#    is mounted on /cdrom
#
;   preexec = /bin/mount /cdrom
;   postexec = /bin/umount /cdrom

[shared]
writeable = yes
valid users = MIDKEMIA+ian,@MIDKEMIA+unixadm
browsable = yes
create mode = 777
path = /shared

[wwwroot]
guest account = ian
writeable = yes
path = /var/www
valid users = MIDKEMIA+administrator,@MIDKEMIA+unixadm
create mode = 777
browsable = yes

[salearn]
guest account = ian
writeable = yes
public = yes
path = /etc/spamassassin/sa-learn

testparm

vi /etc/hosts
add 10.x.x.3 sarig.midkemia.local sarig
10.x.x.4 nakor.midkemia.local nakor

vi /etc/nsswitch.conf

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference’ and `info’ packages installed, try:
# `info libc “Name Service Switch”‘ for information about this file.

passwd: files winbind
shadow: files winbind
group: files winbind

#hosts: db files nisplus nis dns
hosts: files dns wins

# Example – obey only what nisplus tells us…
#services: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
#networks: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
#protocols: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
#rpc: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
#ethers: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
#netmasks: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files

bootparams: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files

ethers: db files
netmasks: files
networks: files dns
protocols: db files
rpc: files
services: files

netgroup: files

publickey: nisplus

automount: files
aliases: files nisplus

sudo net ads join -U administrator

install files for rlogin rsh-rod-server ssh

Next set up Apache webserver. Change www permissions and copy internal, external and squid-reports from old server to www
Configure appropriate virtual servers

Next install Danguardian filtering.
This requires squid proxy server installed.
In webmin choose Squid Proxy Server in Un-Used Modules, it told me it was not installed and offered to download and install it for me. Sounds good and just worked.

Configuration, Access Control,
Access Control Lists
Create new ACL Client Address called lan, from IP 10.x.x.0 netmask 24
Create new ACL Client Address called our_networks, from IP 10.x.x.0 netmask 24
Proxy restrictions
Add proxy restriction Allow our_networks and move above Allow localhost

Authentication Programs
Number of authentication programs 5
Authentication cache time 2 hours
Authentication realm Squid proxy-caching web server

Install squid-cgi package

Download Dansguardian Webmin module
Install Dansguardian package, this installs to a different location than the Webmin module expects, so edit module config:
Full path to DG binary   /usr/sbin/dansguardian
Command to restart DG (if allowed)  /usr/sbin/dansguardian -r
Command to start DG (if allowed)  /usr/sbin/dansguardian
Command to stop DG (if allowed)  pkill dansguardian

Hmm that’s it then. That was so much easier than when I first installed it.

Install sarg package
Edit webmin module config for sarg
Full path to SARG configuration file  /etc/sarg/sarg.conf

Install mailutils package

Finally install and configure SpamAssassin. I used the existing local.cf as a guideline.

The laptop ran fine for a few hours and then crashed. Hmm, that’s not a good start. On investigating it was very hot. After letting it all cool down, it worked again, so my thoughts were a ventilation problem. Then it re-occured, OK, there’s something else going on!
It turns out the cooling fan isn’t running, so that was why it overheated. Google turned up dellfand, which I downloaded and made following the site instructions. I set the fan low speed to 35C and fan high to 40C and set it to start on system start.

Update: This worked fine until the hot weather last week, when it overheated again. I have now changed the fan low to 30C and fan high to 35C and the system now is fairly stable at about 35C most of the time.

I searched for the problem and found a command to change the colour of the line to black, xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0

I added this to one of the mythtv startup files, but during one of the updates it got replaced. So we have been living with this annoying blue line for longer than we should have. I have been asked a few times to fix it and haven’t got around to it, oops sorry Jo.

Anyway, using the suggestion here http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/NVidiaProprietaryDriver, I have added it to the X11 configuration and now the problem has gone away again.

This then provided the next challenge with Mythtv, how to get a recording onto a DVD in a playable format. Mythtv has an archive utility, so here’s what I did.

On the main menu, select Optical Discs, Archive files. The first time I selected Create Archive – this isn’t the option I wanted, what this does is copy the recording to DVD, rather than create a playable DVD. Anyway, select Create DVD and then choose the type of media, I used DVD+/-RW and selected to burn to DVD and force overwrite DVD-RW.

Next you select the theme for the DVD menus, I used the first one, G.A.N.T. Animated.

Then you select the recording, file or videos that you want to burn to DVD. Select Add Rec and then when the list appears, go up to change from All Recordings to the individual groups, it makes it much easier to find the one you want. Highlight the one you want and press enter (space), then select OK, this takes you back to the screen showing the recording that you want to burn and how much space they will take. Press Next and the system will start to check the recording for any errors. This is where my first problem came:

Failed to run mythtranscode to fix any errors
ERROR: Failed while running mytharchivehelper to get stream information from “/mnt/usb1/mythtv/2001_20101229195800.mpg”

After searching , I found the answer (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=610856) was to delete the .ICEauthority file in the user home directory. This allowed the software to progress past this stage. I need to find a better solution for this as the file is recreated every time you log on.

The next error I got was ‘IOError: Cannot open resource‘. Searching (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/463495) found that this was related to to location of a font file. I could have linked the file, but just copied it to the expected location.

I thought I’d got there, as it proceeded for a long time, before giving me the next error, ‘OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted‘. This turned out to be case of removing the tick from the FIFO setting (http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17169&sid=0dbdb1f878b278a481a2998c613cf107)

It did fail to actually burn the DVD, ERROR: Failed while running growisofs, but it had created all the files, so I burnt them myself. The burning problem was either due to permissions or the disc not being blank ( I know, I selected to force overwrite), we’ll see what happens the next time.

Edit: OK, with a blank disc it was able to write the DVD, but then I got unable to reload tray: No such file or directory. The DVD did burn and is playable. The error seems to be a bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dvd+rw-tools/+bug/615382), but as it isn’t causing me a problem, I won’t worry about it for the moment.

A few months ago we picked up a usb TV tuner at Costco and that got me thinking about a PC based solution for the problem. About 9 years ago when we first attached a PC to our HiFi system, it was a very low specification and although we had a TV tuner card, the PC wasn’t powerful enough to record anything usable. As time went on, the PC has been replaced a few times and about 5 years ago we installed a piece of software called Meedio that we used to manage/play our video and audio files. There was also Meedio TV to record from TV, but we never explored it as the PC was still fairly low spec. At the time we chose Meedio, I had been aware of a Linux based program called Mythtv, but due to the fact that the PC was low spec and I was more familiar with Windows, this was discounted.

Roll forward to this year and I explored the options again. This time Mythtv sounded worth investigating, so I downloaded a copy of Mythbuntu, this is a Ubuntu Linux operating system bundled with Mythtv. I am currently using Ubuntu on a PC providing filtered internet access for the kids, so was more familiar with this than any other distribution. Using a 120GB disc in the old Dell desktop we replaced 18 months ago, I installed Mythbuntu and started trying it out. In the past few years Linux installations have become a breeze. My first installation was Slackware 2 back in 1995, and that was a command line experience that was challenging. Now, you just put the CD in and get lead through the install just like a Windows operating system installation. Anyway, after less than 30 minutes, I had the operating system installed, Mythtbuntu configured with my usb TV tuner and the first TV programs recording. I set the program guide to pick up from the cable guide and that gave me a few days available programming.

One of the first things I experimented with was changing the program guide to get its data from Radio Times using the xmltv program. I found configuration information for UK xmltv on the Mythtv website to help with that. Once I got this working, I then had 14 days of program guide which gave a lot more flexibility in programming. At this point I was only able to record Freeview channels.

Having proved that the concept worked, I set about gathering the required parts. The existing PC attached to our HiFi was an old HP Evo small form factor which would enable me to install 2 PCI cards to provide the connections to cable and aerial. I selected a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 dual digital card to allow recording/viewing of 2 Freeview channels. To connect to the cable box, I needed an analogue tuner with composite input, so a Hauppauge PVR 150 card was selected. As usual, my thoughts turned to Ebay as the source for all of the parts and quickly acquired the needed cards. While contemplating the plan for how I would build the system while providing the minimum downtime for the existing functions for the HIFi PC, I concluded it was best to get a second Evo SFF PC and build the system in that and then swap once it was setup and working. I bought a used 160GB disc off ebay (not a good idea – more later) and started to assemble the new system. Needless to say this was only a week before we went on holiday, so it wasn’t going to be in full operation before we went.

Hardware

• HP Evo SFF PC (2.53GB Processor, 1.2GB RAM, on-board sound and graphics)
• Seagate 160GB IDE Hard drive
• Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB PCI tuner card
• Hauppauge WinTv PVR-150 tuner card

Initially, I installed the PVR 150 in the bottom PCI slot and the T 500 in the top PCI slot, however the system would only boot sometimes that way around, so I swapped them over.

I installed Mythbuntu from the CD using the Mythbuntu installation guide for help. The last step of Mythbuntu installation launches the Mythtv backup setup. This is where you configure the cards for recording and the locations for storing your files. Mythtv software is split into 2 halves; there is the backup that controls the cards and the recordings and the frontend that displays the recordings and is the user interface. As I intended to possibley attach multiple frontends to this backend, I set a static IP address for my network during the configuration. As I’m in the UK I selected PAL-I for TV format and left the channel frequency table at try-all. Local timezone was set to auto. All the other settings in the general section was left as default.

Next setting up the cards. The order that the cards are added to the system detirmines the priority of the card. It took me a few goes to get the cards working and then get them in the right order ( I have currently have cards 7,8 and 12). First add the first channel of the digital card:

• DVB DTV Capture card (v3.x)
• /dev/dvb/adaptor0/frontend0

finish. Then add the second channel

• DVB DTV Capture card (v3.x)
• /dev/dvb/adaptor1/frontend0

finish. Then add the analogue card:

• IVTV MPEG-2 encoder card
• /dev/video0
• Composite1

finish. Once the cards are added, press Esc to return to the main menu.

Setting video sources. I created a source called Cable and another called Freeview. Both were initially set to use the transmitted guide only (EIT). Once the sources are added, press Esc to return to the main menu.

Setting input connections. This is where you connect the card to the source. For DVB adaptor0/frontend0 I selected Freeview as the source and selected scan for channels. This then scanned and populated the channel table with the Freeview channels. I set DVB adaptor1/frontend0 to Freeview as well, but didn’t re-scan for channels. MPEG /dev/video0 Composite1 was set to Cable source. I scanned for channels but shouldn’t have.

The storage directories can remain the defaults for the moment.

The backend is basically setup at the moment. Press Esc to exit the backend setup menu and allow mythfilldatabase to run.

Run the Mythtv Frontend and hopefully you will have some channels and be able to change between them.

The next thing I did was to configure the program guide to get its data from Radio Times. As mentioned above, I found the configuration information for UK xmltv on the Mythtv website helped get this working. I went back into the Mytv backend setup and configured mythfilldatabase to run daily early in the morning. I found if I ran mythfilldatabase from the command line, it worked fine, however if Mythtv ran it then an error occured. It failed with error 512. I found the following on the unbuntu forums http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=624517 which gave the the answer. The configuration was setup in my account, but not for the mythtv account that was running the software. The solution that I chose was to link the configuration files in my account into the mythtv account

• cd /home/mythtv/.mythtv
• sudo ln -s /home/ian/.mythtv/Cable.xmltv
• sudo ln -s /home/ian/.mythtv/Freeview.xmltv

Changing the permissions on my files so that mythtv could read and write to them resolved the mythfilldatabase error. There was another error when filling the database:
XMLTV requires a Date::Manip timezone of +0000 to work properly.
I found the answer to this bug here http://www.artificialworlds.net/freeguide/FAQ/DateManipError and following the instructions downloaded the Debian packages to resolve this problem. Finally to resolve a permissions problem with the cache file, (~/.xmltv/cache) I changed permissions to write for other. At this point xmltv would download the guide information automatically from Radio Times every morning.

This was the state the system was left in when we went on holiday. It was scheduled to record all the Freeview programs we wanted while on holiday in parallel with the DVD recorder. When we came back it had performed perfectly, so it was time to swap it into full use.

That’s for another post.

What, you’re still reading. I am surprised!

OK, here is some background. HP Web JetAdmin is software that monitors network attached printers and provides alerts when certain conditions are met. For example, if the toner is low or there is a paper jam, it can alert you, allowing you to be proactive with support. It means that you can purchase toners when alerted rather than holding a large stock or being caught on the hop when all the colour printers are out and no-one has mentioned it until 5 minutes before a critical print job.

Anyway, we had been using this software for some years at work without any problems. You would just get the alert email with a summary of the issue and a link allowing you to open the admin interface in a web browser. Recently, we had some major network changes which resulted in the IP addresses being changed for all our network devices (including computers and printers). After the changes, and rediscovering the new printers (some of their details changed as well), the Web JetAdmin software continued to work as before. Unfortunately, this also included the link to open the admin interface. It was still using the old IP address which was no longer valid.

After ‘googling’ for the solution without luck, I tried several approaches, some of which got me into a bit of a mess with the database. In the end I got the software re-installed, only to find it was still hooked into the old database and the old information.

To cut to the chase, the solution is really simple. In the c:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Web Jetadmin 10\WJABackupRestore folder run the backup script to produce a backup set. I had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in the script due to a non-standard installation.

Once you have the backup, open the file ‘HP.Imaging.Wjp.Core.WebServer.config.xml‘ in the Settings\WjaService\config folder and modify the IP address to the new address.

e.g.
<property name=”HostIPv4Address”>
<type>HP.Imaging.Wjp.Sdk.Core.Framework.ConfigurationItemString</type>
<value>192.168.50.125</value>
</property>

Run the restore script and allow it to overwrite the existing database. I also had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in this script due to my non-standard installation.

Your emails will now contain the correct link to launch the admin interface.

Hopefully this will save someone a lot of time.

I’ve had a look around at WordPress plugins and tried out two, WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King and WordPress Mobile by Andy Moore. I used the demo of Opera Mini to assist me in my testing.

WordPress Mobile

The installation was a straight forward copy the file to the wordpress plugin folder and activate the plugin. Then under settings you can adjust some of the options including the predefined colour schemes. I chose blue to match with the general theme of my sites. The plugin has the functionality to add Admob Mobile Advertising and Google AdSense for Mobile adverts to the top and bottom of the pages, or at least it would have if the functions needed to make this work were enabled on my hosting.

It provided a clean rendering of the content of my site, by eliminating the sidebar contents and theme images. I did have problems with some errors at the top of the post pages:

Warning: imagesx(): supplied argument is not a valid Image resource in /homepages/…./wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mobile.php on line 1869

Warning: imagesy(): supplied argument is not a valid Image resource in /homepages/…./wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mobile.php on line 1870

Warning: cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/…./wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mobile.php:1869) in /homepages/…./wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mobile.php on line 606

If you ignored the errors, the rest of the page loaded fine. Any comments on posts were shown on a separate link.

WordPress Mobile Edition

The installation caught me out, I should have read the readme file. You have to copy the file to the wordpress plugin folder and the wp-mobile folder to the themes folder, then activate the plugin. There are no settings to adjust, it just works.

Again, it also produce a clean, uncluttered version of my site by eliminating the same things. One thing I did like was that it included the comments to post on the same page and also displayed the Firestats extras (country, operating system and browser images) with the comment.

While I’m sure the issue with the errors on the post pages could have been resolved in the WordPress Mobile plugin, I don’t think it offered anything to me over the WordPress Mobile Edition one from Alex King. While checking out Alex King‘s site, I realised I was already using another of his plugins, Twitter Tools.

The upgrade was straight forward and all my plugins activated without any apparent issue. However, when I checked my stats, the page wouldn’t load any details, just a blank page. I have used FireStats since migrating to WordPress and had got used to the results it gives, so I headed over to the FireStats site to see if there was an upgrade. I found version 1.5.12 and so downloaded and installed it. To be on the safe side, I installed to a new database so that I didn’t have to upgrade my existing stats database. This didn’t resolve my blank stats page issue and gave me some messages about features needing a higher version of MySQL than my host 1and1 provides, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled my previous version 1.4.4.

I then tried turning all my plugins off, and brilliant, Firestats worked! I then started turning plugins back on and came to the conclusion that it worked fine with all except if AskApache Password Protect or WordPress Database Backup plugins were activated. Not so good, these were important plugins to me.

I looked at some alternate stats packages, but they weren’t FireStats, so yesterday morning I raised a ticket with the bug I had found on the FireStats site. Within minutes I’d had a reply from the developer, Omry Yadan, who suggested that it sounded like a memory issue and pointed me to a wiki entry about this and how to resolve it. After some more testing when I confirmed that Firestats, AskApache Password Protect and WordPress Database Backup would work together, I just couldn’t have all my plugins working and get to the admin/stats pages of FireStats, I had to agree with Omry. I tried increasing the memory limit using .htaccess as described in the wiki, but this caused a server 500 internal error, so that wasn’t an option. I then created a php.ini file with the memory limit statement in it and uploaded to the root of my test domain. According to phpinfo() this did increase the memory limit setting, however it didn’t resolve it.

I was unable to get to the server error logs, as 1and1 don’t allow access on shared hosting. Firestats tools showed that I had a memory limit of 40MB set even though I thought I had set higher in testing, so it didn’t look as if my settings were having any impact. I used the 1and1 code for creating my own error log to try to gather the error message when I was having the problem, and although I did get some logging, it wasn’t occuring when I was having the problem. The logging I did get was the same whether or not FireStats was allowing me access to the admin/stats pages (turning off other plugins to get access).

This needed a different approach to work around the problem. Even though I was unable to access the admin/stats pages on my test blog, the page views and hits were being logged correctly into the database. I have all my blogs set to use the same database tables for FireStats with different ids for each source, this means that from any Firestats interface I can view all statistics anyway. So I have installed a standalone copy of FireStats pointing to the same database and am able to view my stats from there.

The way I had worked until that point was a full install of FireStats in each WordPress blog, which I then configured to use the same database tables. This meant that each time I upgraded FireStats, I had to upload it seperately to each blog. The one downside of Firestats is its size, 3MB, so that’s a lot of upload time for multiple blogs. In a follow up email conversation with Omry, he suggested I install in satellite mode. This involves an install of Firestats seperate from WordPress (just done that -check), then instead of a full install of FireStats for each blog, it just needs 1 file in the plugins folder. This is configured in options to point to the standalone install and it just works. Any updates in the future only have to performed on the standalone copy and the new file put in plugins for your blogs. Brilliant.

I was very impressed by the support that Omry gave and will be following his advice to upgrade to version 1.5, which will be much easier now there is only one upload to do.

A couple of the add-ons I have been using are NoScript and IE Tab. NoScript is great as it prevent scripts running on a site unless you choose to allow them, this means that in cases of an advert laden webpage, most of them will not work unless you want them to. IE Tab is ideal for those sites that just will not work properly unless you are using Internet Explorer.

I have got so used to using Firefox, that it’s frustrating at work, where we still use IE6, when I use the keyboard shortcut to open a new tab.

Anyway, this post is about the release on Tuesday 17th June of Firefox 3. There is an attempt to set a world record for most software downloads in 24 hours. I have tried a couple of the beta versions of Firefox 3 and found it to be stable and fast, so I will be downloading the release version on Tuesday.

A problem I had been having with it was after waking my laptop from hibernation, the Microsoft connection would fail to reconnect. Yahoo would reconnect without problem, but Microsoft would keep trying for about 10 minutes before finally failing. If I did a Global Disconnect before hibernating and then a Global Reconnect after waking it up, then everything worked fine.

Well it worked fine providing I remembered to reconnect after waking up. This didn’t always happen, as my post a few days ago about my unexpected Plugoo message shows.

Looking at the logs for the MSN connection shows:

[20:46] *** Lost connection to network (Error Code: 10054).
[20:46] *** Reconnecting to MSN as “*****@********.com”
[20:46] *** Will attempt 10 connections with 60 second intervals.
[20:46] *** Failure resolving “messenger.hotmail.com”! Attempting to connect to a known server…
[20:46] *** Connecting to MSN as “*****@********.com”, attempt 1.
[20:46] *** Error while connecting (Error Code: 0). Disconnecting.
[20:48] *** Connecting to MSN as “*****@********.com”, attempt 2.
[20:48] *** Error while connecting (Error Code: 0). Disconnecting.
[20:49] *** Connecting to MSN as “*****@********.com”, attempt 3.
[20:49] *** Error while connecting (Error Code: 0). Disconnecting.
[20:50] *** Connecting to MSN as “*****@********.com”, attempt 4.
[20:51] *** Error while connecting (Error Code: 0). Disconnecting.

It appears that as the system comes out of hibernation, Trillian attempts to do a DNS lookup for messenger.hotmail.com. As the network connection hasn’t been re-established, the lookup fails and then it tries to connect to MSN using a different address. It never tries the lookup again and fails to get a response on the address it uses.

Checking the ip address for messenger.hotmail.com

nslookup messenger.hotmail.com
Server: xxxx.xxxxxxx.xxxxxx
Address: 192.168.1.3
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: dp.msnmessenger.akadns.net
Address: 65.54.239.20
Aliases: messenger.hotmail.com

This gave me the IP address 65.54.239.20 for messenger.hotmail.com

I then changed the entry for the MSN host in Trillian. In Trillian preferences, select Identities and Connections, select your Microsoft connection and press Change.

On the connection tab, I changed the host entry from messenger.hotmail.com to 65.54.239.20.

Since making this change, Trillian reconnects the Microsoft connection within a minute automatically after waking from hibernation.

Anyway, yesterday, being totally certain that I was up to date, I ran the Secunia website Software Inspector on our desktop and was surprised to find a few software applications showing as out of date. Adobe Flash player was a version behind and the previous version of SunJava was still installed despite the current version being installed. I have had this before with SunJava, as it doesn’t uninstall the old version when upgrading, so I should have remembered. The software inspector explains this and details how to resolve it (remove old versions from Add or Remove Programs).

My AntiVirus software, Avast, checks for updates every 4 hours and is set to audibly announce the updates. After a while you get used to the ‘Virus database has been updated’ message and I personally won’t turn it off. If you do not have current antivirus software or your existing software subscription is expiring, I would thoroughly recommend Avast, it is free for home use and the virus signatures are regularly updated, often a couple of times a day.